Douglas Todd: If your child talks about being a different gender, take it slowly

The public debate over children who want to become a different gender is highly polarized and politicized. In the midst of it parents are struggling.

B.C. and Ontario now have public school programs advocating full acceptance of people who might be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. But that doesn’t mean parents know what to do if their children tell them they’re confused, or even adamant, about adopting another sexual identity.

On one end of the spectrum are protesters of educational efforts like B.C.’s SOGI 123 (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity). Many such demonstrators are conservative Christians, as well as Muslims or Sikhs, who generally claim to accept LGBT people but have religious beliefs about concepts such as “gender fluidity.”

At the other polarized end are transgender activists and anti-discrimination educators who file lawsuits against and call for the resignations of people who question SOGI programs, whom they often dismiss as “transphobic,” “fearmongers” or “bigots.”

But slogans don’t go far in assisting families. In such a charged atmosphere the growing number of children doubting their sexual identity, as well as their parents, are bewildered.

“The parents are feeling absolutely beleaguered,” said Dr. Susan Bradley, former chief of psychiatry at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. The professor emerita at the University of Toronto began the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and continues to consult with mental-health clinics.

“On one hand the message that is now pervasive in Canada and the U.S. is that we’ve got to have respect for other people. And nobody can disagree with that,” said Bradley. “The problem is, if somebody comes along and says to you, ‘I think I’m transsexual,’ does that mean you should say automatically, ‘That’s great.’”

When children express feelings about being a different gender, Price said. “Most parents respond by saying, ‘I’m really confused and I want somebody to help me figure this out.’ And parents do need help to know how to address their child’s issues and not get into a battle with them.”

While Bradley has over the decades helped many patients transition to another gender, she encourages wariness of the “black and white” manifestos that now dominate the internet. She recommends parents seek therapists who understand the complexities of children.

Being prepared is more important than ever, Bradley suggested, because the percentage of young people expressing feelings about wanting to be another sex has skyrocketed from the roughly one out of 1,000 who brought up such ideas in the 1980s.

In the past it was predominantly children between the ages of four and ten who would stun parents by saying, “I think I’m a boy” or “I think I’m a girl.” But researchers say a new wave of North American teenagers, mostly females, are beginning to identity as another sex.

For her part, Vancouver author Liza Salazar, who physically transitioned when she was in her 50s, acknowledges it’s “not so easy” for parents when their children “come out to them as trans”

Much depends on keeping lines of communication open. “You will need to have a calm conversation,” Salazar says. “Parents shouldn’t be horrified if their child comes out … The child is vulnerable and may be running scared. Think of it: Only now are medical schools beginning to include transgender care in their curricula.”

There can be no cookie-cutter response to a child who identifies with another gender, said Salazar, who works as a spiritual care practitioner in Vancouver. “It may answer many questions and help you make sense of your life, but it can also threaten to turn your life upside down.” Salazar suggests families take time to weigh the social, financial and emotional costs of transitioning.

A key reason many mental health specialists urge great caution in supporting gender switches is that many children grow out of their feelings.

One study of girls with gender dysphoria, a broad term for those who want to change their sex, was lead by the University of Toronto’s Kelley Drummond. The team followed 25 Canadian girls diagnosed with gender dysphoria (at the average age of eight) and found, when the girls grew into their early twenties, only 12 per cent still identified with another gender.

While some transgender activists write off such studies as “bad science,” most therapists, at the least, urge parents to allow children years to monitor their emotions and choices. “A lot of adults who do eventually decide to transition do in fact feel a whole lot better about themselves,” said Bradley. But it’s rarely wise, she says, for most people, especially the young, to rush into a new gender.

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